Boxing Day

Today is, of course, Thanksgiving Boxing Day. This morning I am at the studios of home dot fm to broadcast mornings at home, then a brief stop at church dot fm to make sure that this Sunday is good to go, then it will be straight home dot fam to start scheming operation: Christmas Tree. It’s been a good Thanksgiving Boxing Day so far.

Some people spent their Thanksgiving Boxing Day standing in a line, both to get into a store and then, inversely, to get out. In order to get out of the store, they had to offer money that was equal to the value of the box they were holding. For some people, spending 14 hours standing in line at Wal-Mart so that they can save 30 bucks on an Emerson TV that will most certainly stop working exactly 1 minute after the 6 hour warranty expires is a good use of time. I suppose it’s all about the experience and bragging rights. I mean — 14 hours for 30 bucks — there are some people who would call that pretty good value. And those people are the ones that get paid 2 American dollars per hour to oversee the factories that build the TV.

But I’m no economist.

Some stores (Sears, KMart, Kroger and aforementioned Wal-Mart) were open yesterday, AKA Thanksgiving Boxing Day Eve, AKA Thanksgiving. As a matter of fact, Sears was open for the first time ever on Thanksgiving Day. From what I hear, there were enough customers there to justify doing the same thing next year. There will come a day in the near future that all stores will be open always, and the suggestion that a retail employee have a holiday off will be fondly remembered but unacceptable to our culture. “Hey — we all have to work” or “Hey — we all need to save 20 percent on band saws” will be the new answer as to why a family can’t have a meal all together at one table on Thanksgiving. Sad.

I suppose we’re all part of the problem. How do we fix this? Does it need fixing? Am I overreacting? Did I accidentally eat some neck meat with yesterday’s Turkey? I’m not sure. I do know that the internet renders some pretty good deals that, according to some people who know far more about this than me, are as good if not better than the brick-and-mortar deals we see on days like this. With the internet, there’s no line — not since the days of Prodigy and CompuServe, at least — and there are no employees missing family time because they had to respond to “Cleanup, Aisle 4 — and bring the Shop Vac”

By the way, if you’re looking for a good deal on Shop Vacs, I have one that will rival any black Friday sale, by which I mean black mold.